


A Slow Disaster

by Kingmaking



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 09:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6512311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kingmaking/pseuds/Kingmaking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They crown them in purple and gold and red like the blood she spilled across Denerim, on a day so bright the sunlight makes her hair shine like copper. Red Rowan, they will come to call her, for that as much as for the war she waged.</p><p>Her crown, made for queens and consorts, is heavier than she thought it would be.</p><p>(Another retelling of A Radiant Darkness, this time--the last one--from darling Rowan's POV.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Slow Disaster

**I**.

They crown them in purple and gold and red like the blood she spilled across Denerim, on a day so bright the sunlight makes her hair shine like copper. Red Rowan, they will come to call her, for that as much as for the war she waged.

Her crown, made for queens and consorts, is heavier than she thought it would be.

 

 **II**.

He's gone from Denerim not even a month after the coronation--Loghain, who ever since the war was won hasn't addressed her by name once. He's full of promises to write letters and come visit in the summer, hugs Maric like a brother and bows to her like to a stranger, without a word. She hears nothing of him leaving Gwaren until a year after, on the occasion of a tourney Bryce and Eleanor Cousland give for the birth of their boy. 

''I cannot go,'' she says simply. ''There is still much work to do in Denerim.''

Maric nods sadly, agrees and kisses her cheek. It's the truth, after all, and she barely notices he's gone. Perhaps because she doesn't want to. He returns, happy as a child from having seen him, and speaks of the letter their friend, again, has promised to write. 

On a winter morning, she sneaks into his study--which he seldom ever uses, truth be told--and searches through his papers until she finds them, Loghain's blasted letters to his king. She reads the words hastily; mentions of Celia and Anora, of the work he's done in Gwaren, of how very  _happy_  he is now. Nowhere does he mention her, or why he isn't writing her. 

 _He hates me_ , she tells herself; becoming entirely convinced of it is easy, after she's held the thought, sharp and cold, against her heart long enough to draw blood.

If Maric even knows, if he could even guess, he doesn't say anything. 

 

 **III**.

''One sovereign it's a boy,'' says her brother Eamon. ''Or perhaps a baby whale? Can you even  _move_?'' 

Rowan, in the ninth month of a pregnancy that came as a surprise to herself as much, she knows, as to Maric, turns to glare. None of this was even remotely pleasant; she could barely move, couldn't run, couldn't ride and couldn't fight.  _By the Maker, never again_ , she'd promised Maric. He'd looked sad.

She throws all the pillows the maidservants have brought to ease her sitting at her brothers; Eamon dodges the first one and is hit by the second right in the face. The third accidentally hits Teagan. 

''I did nothing to you!'' he exclaims with false indignation. ''I demand an apology.'' 

''I'll leave you a castle in my will,'' Rowan promises. ''Rainesfere, perhaps?'' The place had been their mother's favorite, and Teagan was more like her than he could know. Rowan herself loved to think she was her father's truest heir; she'd fought in the same war, defended the same ideals, until the end. Eamon was... difficult to pin down, to say the least. There was an ambition in him she found rather unsettling; perhaps it came from spending such long a time in the Free Marches. 

 

 **IV**.

''GET OUT! OUT, OUT OUT!'' Rowan shouts. Beams of sweat are running down her forehead, she has thrown the last two cups of water poor Maric brought her at the wall and, frankly, she's never been more terrified. The midwives were full of lies--this would never end, she would die here, she was certain of it. ''This is your fault!''

Maric has the  _gall_  of answering to that: ''Well, obviously, but-'' She throws one of her pillows at him, would jump at his throat if the midwives weren't holding her down. ''I'll, huh, wait outside. You can do it! I believe in you. I'll be sure to collect our money from Eamon if it's a normal baby and not a w-''

'' _GET OUT!_ ''

A new wave of pain washes over her and drowns everything out--what she sees and what she hears, even the sound of her own screams. Later, they will tell her she cried out for her long-dead mother in her pain; there is but good Mother Ailis, who kneels next to her bed, holds her hand and bathes her face in cold water. 

''You can do it, my Queen,'' she says. Her voice is a plea, a prayer. ''You can do it.'' Rowan barely hears anything.

 

 **V**.

Letters full of congratulations and well-wishes come from all over Ferelden--even some from Orlais. ''They smell like cheese, I  _swear_  they do,'' Maric exclaims. He sits cross-legged at the end of her bed and reads the letters aloud. Rowan holds Cailan; barely a few weeks old and already surprisingly curious, he won't stop looking at his father. ''Here's one from some nobleman named… huh, Gaspard de Châlons. Or something.'' He massacres the name enough to make Rowan laugh, and thus says it again. Twice. ''I guess  _someone_  had to acknowledge the mysterious kingdom beyond the mountains still existed.'' He tosses it aside. ''This one's from the Couslands, that one from the Arl of Amaranthine, and--ah, this one... and there's more than one, too. This one's from Loghain. To you.''

She despises herself for the smile she cannot hide, the bright uproar in her chest; Maric smiles, too, and awkwardly takes Cailan from her arms in exchange for the letter. He opens both of his, reads them aloud to her; one is from a Teyrn to his King, the other from a man to his friend. Mundane, happy, all of it. Rowan observes her own letter, still sealed, eyes it suspiciously. ''I will read it later,'' she decides. ''I need to sleep. Your little prince has been taking much of my time, lately.''

Maric gasps. ''Shall I challenge him to a duel over the matter of your favor, my fair lady?''

''Perhaps in a few years, my lord. If you’re brave enough; I think my son will be quite the warrior, like his mother.''

''I’ll hold you to that. My beautiful wife. Your mother is beautiful, yes, pup? Of course. He agrees. Look! He blinked.''

When he kisses her forehead, she grips his shirt, wraps a careful, almost hesitant arm around his neck and presses her lips to his until a little sound from Cailan gets their undivided attention again. And then Maric leaves her, alone with Loghain’s letter. It weighs more and more in her hands the longer she holds it, unopened. She breaks the seal carefully--she's got half a mind to keep it, quickly decides that she won’t.

The words themselves are… something. A surprise. She reads them slowly, certain that Maric made a mistake; Loghain wouldn’t write her, not after all this time. Yet he has. He speaks of his life in Gwaren, of his wife and his daughter; he speaks of his few travels, of how he’s met with her brothers and thinks they did very well for themselves. He speaks of their past together--yet, somehow, doesn’t mention the war once. It seems a lifetime ago, now that she is truly the Queen, throned and crowned. He speaks of the dragon they saw, the last day she thought of holding him without shame or guilt.

She keeps the words in her heart for a long time into the night and finds they are still there when she wakes up, the next morning, the letter carefully folded in her hand. She tries to come up with a response, spends days on it. Sits in the gardens thinking of Loghain--he’d had so few words for her, back during the war, and now _she_ was the one who struggled?

She makes five attempts at a reply, counts them all. The words are clumsy, the feather unsteady in her trembling fingers. Some begin with simply _Loghain_ , some with _Old Friend_ , some with a colder, more formal _Teyrn Loghain_.

One begins with nothing special and ends with _Yours_. This one, she leaves on her desk for almost a week, next to Loghain’s. After a while, she takes them both and hides them in a drawer.

A year after, she finds them by accident--she’s searching for something else entirely, some of the letters Father wrote for her brothers while they were away in the Free Marches and never sent. She doesn’t find those. But she finds hers, and Loghain’s, and reads the words again and again, _Yours_ , _Yours_ , _Yours_ , until anger overcomes her and she throws them both in the fire.

When her eyes begin to ache, when tears threaten to fall, she grabs the delicate chair of her vanity and smashes it against the floor. Anger is better than sadness, always better.

It is easier this way.

 

 **VI**.

Cailan turns two. Maric showers him with gifts of all sorts. Rowan, to whom such ideas do not come as easily, remembers her own early birthdays, during the war. A horse, a bow, a pair of new gloves, the leather rough and unbroken. Anything not taken from their own dead or the Orlesians had been an unbelievable luxury, back then.

And, as soon as she'd been old enough to hold it... ''A wooden sword?'' Maric seems amused, if a bit worried. They do not let Cailan play with it, not yet anyway. And at any rate, the boy seems far more interested in the figurine Teagan has procured from Maker knows where; it depicts one of the long-dead griffons, and Cailan spends hours running around and throwing it in the air as though he expects it to take flight.

Later, Maric shows her what came from Gwaren: a wooden shield, engraved with the Theirin's crest. Came with it, also, a short letter; the Teyrn's greetings, to nobody in particular. 

Rowan wonders whether Loghain has told his daughter tales of the war.

 

 **VII**.

Maric is nothing if not persistent. He ambushes her in Cailan's nursery, one morning, the second they're alone. ''I thought I could go to Gwaren in the summer,'' he begins, and already she has straightened her back and lifted her chin. ''You could come to, if you-''

''One of us has to stay here,'' she replies immediately, as she has for years, always the same excuse. It is easier this way. Maric’s puzzled, disappointed face hurts her still--she doesn’t allow herself to show any of it. He would be happy in Gwaren; Loghain would be too, most surely. They didn’t deserve the grim reminder of their past in the form of her and her bitterness. ''But you’re free to go. Of course.'' She picks Cailan, who has stopped playing and is now looking at her curiously, off the floor and sits him on her hip. He wraps his little arms around her neck and sings _mama_ , _mama_ , _mama_. ''I’m not feeling too well these days, anyway. I need rest.''

It’s a lie, of course. She hates herself for it--is it cowardice, to be unable to face him, even years after the war, years into their respective marriages? It would only hurt Maric, to see them both this way. She convinces herself of it and, while he’s gone, throws herself into all the distractions she can find. She holds feasts for the noblemen and women of Denerim, who praise her own beauty and how strong and fine her boy has grown. She tells Maric of this, in her letters.

She tells him, also, of the afternoons she spends out on horseback in the countryside, with only a small group of guards and attendants who, she finds quite disappointing, can never keep up with her. She tells him of Redcliffe and her brothers, of Highever and the Couslands, of how Cailan, whom she brings with her everywhere she goes, has taken quite the liking to their boy, little Fergus.  She spends an entire evening writing a letter to Loghain, once, and ends up throwing it into the fire; the next morning, she writes the Teyrna instead, asks about her own health and that of her daughter.

Rowan wonders whether Loghain ever thinks of writing her, too, and decides he does not. She had never replied to what he'd sent following Cailan's birth, after all. She no longer deserved his time, just as he no longer deserved hers. She goes to bed not without some anger--better than sadness, always--in her heart, expecting Maric to return in the following weeks, full of stories she will have to hear and forget, for her own sake.

The illness--they never find a name for it--appears not long after.

 

 **VIII**.

It is nothing, at first. Chills, headaches, a loss of appetite. There are days where she can do nothing but stay in bed, staring at the ceiling. She isn’t quite sure where she hurts, or why. She fears a second pregnancy, for a time, but it goes on for weeks and then months, until the day a terrible dizziness overcomes her and sends her falling from her horse, face-first into the cold mud of Denerim’s streets.

Perhaps she screams as she falls--perhaps it is the crowd. The people stop cheering all at once; she does not see their faces, but she hears their cries; ''Andraste’s mercy, the Queen!''

She doesn’t count the seconds, finds she cannot. Her head, her head, surely she must’ve hit it, no pain could be so terrible. Even in the recent weeks, it had never been this bad. Arms wrap themselves around her--Maric, who shouts her name. She hears nothing but this, and the screams of the crowd and, in the arms of her chief lady-in-waiting, the wailing of Cailan. ''Mama! MAMA! Help mama!''

 _I must’ve lost my footing_ , she wants to say; instead, she starts choking until her vision has blurred and the noise around her has been reduced to a vague buzzing.

 

 **IX**.

Proud Eamon and carefree Teagan sit at her bedside for hours, taking turns with Maric and Mother Ailis. They brought with them from Redcliffe a bunch of Templars and Circle mages she welcomes without a word. She had drank, eaten, inhaled and bathed in all the remedies known to man from the Korcari Wilds to the Anderfels; their spells no longer scared her, their potions were nothing she hadn’t forced down her throat before.

Sometimes, all they do is pray. Or argue. Or argue on what to pray for.

On the days where she is too weak to sit up and talk, she listens. ''But what is it?'' asks Teagan. 

''I do not know,'' says Eamon.

A silence. ''She's suffering.''

A silence, longer. ''I know. Now quiet; she can hear us, and you are _not_ helping.'' 

Sometimes, in her fever, she sees both her parents standing at the end of her bed, smiling. On the bad days, it's Maric's elf lover, the traitor Katriel; or Loghain, who speaks of honor and duty; or her son, her beautiful son, grown and crowned, who doesn't recognize her. 

 

 **X**.

Maric kisses her; there is blood on her lips and tears on his. Somehow it is hardly different from the kiss they shared, a lifetime ago, after Denerim had fallen to them and the Usurper had been slain. She asks for Cailan, thrice; when the nannies bring him, thrice again, she says: ''I love you, I love you, I love you.'' He wraps his little arms around her neck, looks upon her pale, unfamiliar face with worried eyes. Gray like hers in sadness, blue like Maric's in happiness. When Rowan lets out a sob, Cailan's lips start to tremble, and she gives him back to his nannies, tells them to take him away, to make him happy again. ''He is young,'' she tells Maric. ''He will forget he ever saw me like this.''

''Don't say these things,'' Maric begs. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and holds him, thinks of the time where, young and almost untouched by war, she had wished for nothing more than to love him and be loved by him. She still did--oh, how she still did--but they were out of time.

She thinks of Loghain. It is odd, after all this time, to allow herself to. ''Call for him,'' she whispers, most certain that she needn't explain more. ''He must know--he must know I never hated him. He must forgive me.'' 

But Maric has become quiet, his breathing soft and slow. He sleeps, and deserves it.

Sometime after midnight, she remembers what today is and cries more in an hour than she has, it appears to her, throughout her entire life.

Poor, darling, dearest Maric’s thirtieth birthday.

 

 **XI**.

She stares at the ceiling for hours. Maric is still asleep, his head on her stomach; she rests one of her hands on his cheek, careful not to wake him up; she brushes the other through his hair, all tangled and messy from the time he's spent worrying about her. They deserve to sleep, the both of them, but still she's afraid to let go. She would stand, if they allowed her to--if her own legs had enough strength left in them to support her. 

It is strange, to be failed in such a way by one own's body. She'd fought in battles, had almost been cut down at the River Dane, with the screams of men and beasts both ringing in her ears. This is when the tide of the war had turned in their favor, in an ocean of noise. 

And now there was only silence, Maric's soft breathing and her own, ragged and painful. Would he wake up, that she might tell him all she had left unsaid? How she had loved him; how she had taken away what _he_ had loved, twice over--for there was quite a cruel theft, surely, in denying him the joy of seeing her and Loghain both, together, happy. Perhaps the war had made her cruel.

Perhaps that is why the Maker was calling her to Him so soon--a punishment. Or a mercy. Definitely a mercy, to relieve one of such suffering. This is what she notices first: when the pain goes away, all at once, and she is left lying there, alone in the faint light of dawn. 

She believes she can hear rapid footsteps in the distance, faint but familiar. ''Cailan?'' she calls, with whatever strength is left to her. 

Somehow, she smiles, closes her eyes, and waits for her darling boy to join her.

 

 


End file.
